Hood says he notified the company last week in a letter telling the company to preserve any relevant information.

The investigation comes as the internet company is dealing with growing concerns about the company providing users' personal information to third parties without the users' consent or knowledge.

The investigation will cover a time period from November 2013 to the present.

Hood says he is looking into whether Facebook violated the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act when it gave permission to a University of Cambridge professor to harvest information of users who downloaded his app, thisisyourdigitallife.

Types of information collected include user location, friends of the user, and user activity on the social media platform, which was then sold to a third party.

Hood is also part of a bipartisan coalition with 36 state attorneys general in sending a separate letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, raising questions about the social networking site’s policies and practices.

He reminds Mississippians to check the security settings on their social media accounts, paying close attention to any area that offers options for sharing data with applications connected to that social media platform.

Users should also be vigilant of clicking on any links that they have not verified as a trusted source.